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At most conferences, the people speaking are not professional speakers, and as such I don’t mind them running over. In my experience, it’s hard to time a talk
by FemmeAndroid 5y ago
At most conferences, the people speaking are not professional speakers, and as such I don’t mind them running over.
In my experience, it’s hard to time a talk correctly, even with multiple run throughs ahead of time. Standing up in front of a big crowd, even if I’ve got a stop watch running I can end up going far too quick, or far too slowly, and end up with tunnel vision where I fail to identify and correct the mistake.
Are _some_ of the speakers doing it intentionally? Probably. Did some just fail to prepare? Almost certainly. But things come up, and in the most charitable case, they just stood in front of a bunch of people and communicated something they thought was important. I applaud them for that, and move on.
- musingsole 5y agoCorrectly timing a talk is one thing. Blowing past time limits as if they don't exist is another one altogether.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- Uehreka 5y agoSo true! I always rehearse my talks several times with the stopwatch on my phone sitting on a nearby desk, but I feel like that’s not an obvious thing to people who are getting started and don’t have theatre or public speaking experience. It’s a lot like that (probably misattributed) Hemingway quote “If I had more time I would’ve written a shorter letter.”
- niccl 5y agoI've always thought that conference talks should have the traffic light system that you get a Toastmasters. IIRC it's green while you've still got plenty of time, orange when you're within x minutes of the scheduled end, and red once you're at the scheduled end. I've found (from Toastmasters) that a nice bright light at the back of the hall is much easier to respond to than a clock or something counting down